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boco

The Sun has maintained a policy position opposing the Yucca repository for many years and slants its reporting to reinforce its editorial stance. It bases its opposition on the premise that somehow, excellent safety record of transport of waste notwithstanding, an accident involving waste is bound to oocur somewhere within Clark County and will release radiation and cause harm both to people and the economy.This is all based on assumptions from within Nevada, that are different from those used in the government's environmental impact statement.

The contradicitory action (inaction?) by the NRC will leave undecided by the agency that under the law is responsible to determine whether the repository meets safety and other regulatory requirements or not. The Sun would have us believe it does not. The Department of Energy in 2008 the site will be safe. And the NRC staff review that was done prior being terminated by order of the chairman indicated the application was demonstrating compliance, and the Commission has not acted on the merits of the case.

So, we are left with the pronouncement by the Obama Administration that Yucca Mountain is "not a workable option." No evidence of technical basis is provided.

It is irresponsible to perpetuate through repitition the false assertion of how "dangerous it would be to ship nuclear waste cross-country to Nevada." Check the actual safety record to see that there is no basis for such claims. Harry Reid has gone so far as to assert "It would be dangerous and irresponsible to ship the most dangerous substance known to man through cities and small towns and past schools, hospitals and businesses so it can be buried 90 miles outside Las Vegas." Anyone care to compare accident history for such transport and smoking or driving while on a cell phone?

WOXOF is incorrect in his statement that the government has invested $38 billion in Yucca. Depending on how you categorize some of the expenditures, about $9 billion has been spent.

He/she is closer if the statement was that $31 billion in fees and interest have gone into the Nuclear Waste Fund, but besides $7 billion included in the $9 billion spent on Yucca, that does not mean $24 billion is sitting waiting to be spent. Instead, Congress has "borrowed" that amount and left behind a series of IOU's that future Congress (uh-huh, wink-wink) will pay back when we get a new disposal facility.

Dr. van Luik has provided a valuable history of Yucca in the course of this dialogue. Thanks, Abe.

The Dept of Energy provided no scientific or technical basis to support the decision to terminate Yucca other than to say (in the March 3 motion to withdraw the license application from the NRC) that, "the Secretary has decided that a geologic repository at Yucca Mountain is not a workable option." President Obama has referred to the principle that "decisions have consequences." He clearly made a decision in 2007 that it was important in seeking Nevada votes (as did other Democrats during the primary campaigns) to say he opposed Yucca. That pleased Harry Reid and Reid and Obama are together on Yucca and other issues. Now, after talking about it for a year, the administration has brought in a "blue ribbon commission" to find a more "workable" disposal strategy, that will likely take another 20 or more years to implement.

Secretary Chu has said that Yucca is "off the table" and that we can do better, but other than some expression that sufficient R&D and technology advances should yield a better solution in the decades ahead when he and Obama are long gone, Chu has never given a specific reason based on science why Yucca is not workable. Instead, we get the recitation of Nevada assertions like Masto gave as "facts."

This is one of several articles in the media elsewhere that have the lead of the story that this budget cancels the Yucca repository. The Obama administration has made clear that it intends to "terminate" the facility there, the government has yet do so. The site was approved by Congress and signed into law by the previous president (subject to getting a license from the NRC and, one imagines, court challenges.) Therefore it will take an act of Congress to cancel the project. Reid can't pull that off.